The financial standing of the Nation at the present time is excellent,
and the financial management of the Nation's interests by the Government
during the last seven years has shown the most satisfactory results. But
our currency system is imperfect, and it is earnestly to be hoped that
the Currency Commission will be able to propose a thoroughly good system
which will do away with the existing defects.

During the period from July 1, 1901, to September 30, 1908, there was
an increase in the amount of money in circulation of $902,991,399. The
increase in the per capita during this period was $7.06. Within this time
there were several occasions when it was necessary for the Treasury Department
to come to the relief of the money market by purchases or redemptions of
United States bonds; by increasing deposits in national banks; by stimulating
additional issues of national bank notes, and by facilitating importations
from abroad of gold. Our imperfect currency system has made these proceedings
necessary, and they were effective until the monetary disturbance in the
fall of 1907 immensely increased the difficulty of ordinary methods of
relief. By the middle of November the available working balance in the
Treasury had been reduced to approximately $5,000,000. Clearing house associations
throughout the country had been obliged to resort to the expedient of issuing
clearing house certificates, to be used as money. In this emergency it
was determined to invite subscriptions for $50,000,000 Panama Canal bonds,
and $100,000,000 three per cent certificates of indebtedness authorized
by the act of June 13, 1898. It was proposed to re-deposit in the national
banks the proceeds of these issues, and to permit their use as a basis
for additional circulating notes of national banks. The moral effect of
this procedure was so great that it was necessary to issue only $24,631,980
of the Panama Canal bonds and $15,436,500 of the certificates of indebtedness.

During the period from July 1, 1901, to September 30, 1908, the balance
between the net ordinary receipts and the net ordinary expenses of the
Government showed a surplus in the four years 1902, 1903, 1906 and 1907,
and a deficit in the years 1904, 1905, 1908 and a fractional part of the
fiscal year 1909. The net result was a surplus of $99,283,413.54. The financial
operations of the Government during this period, based upon these differences
between receipts and expenditures, resulted in a net reduction of the interest-bearing
debt of the United States from $987,141,040 to $897,253,990, notwithstanding
that there had been two sales of Panama Canal bonds amounting in the aggregate
to $54,631,980, and an issue of three per cent certificates of indebtedness
under the act of June 13, 1998, amounting to $15,436,500. Refunding operations
of the Treasury Department under the act of March 14, 1900, resulted in
the conversion into two per cent consols of 1930 of $200,309,400 bonds
bearing higher rates of interest. A decrease of $8,687,956 in the annual
interest charge resulted from these operations.

In short, during the seven years and three months there has been a net
surplus of nearly one hundred millions of receipts over expenditures, a
reduction of the interest-bearing debt by ninety millions, in spite of
the extraordinary expense of the Panama Canal, and a saving of nearly nine
millions on the annual interest charge. This is an exceedingly satisfactory
showing, especially in view of the fact that during this period the Nation
has never hesitated to undertake any expenditure that it regarded as necessary.
There have been no new taxes and no increase of taxes; on the contrary,
some taxes have been taken off; there has been a reduction of taxation.

CORPORATIONS.

As regards the great corporations engaged in interstate business, and
especially the railroad, I can only repeat what I have already again and
again said in my messages to the Congress, I believe that under the interstate
clause of the Constitution the United States has complete and paramount
right to control all agencies of interstate commerce, and I believe that
the National Government alone can exercise this right with wisdom and effectiveness
so as both to secure justice from, and to do justice to, the great corporations
which are the most important factors in modern business. I believe that
it is worse than folly to attempt to prohibit all combinations as is done
by the Sherman anti-trust law, because such a law can be enforced only
imperfectly and unequally, and its enforcement works almost as much hardship
as good. I strongly advocate that instead of an unwise effort to prohibit
all combinations there shall be substituted a law which shall expressly
permit combinations which are in the interest of the public, but shall
at the same time give to some agency of the National Government full power
of control and supervision over them. One of the chief features of this
control should be securing entire publicity in all matters which the public
has a right to know, and furthermore, the power, not by judicial but by
executive action, to prevent or put a stop to every form of improper favoritism
or other wrongdoing.

The railways of the country should be put completely under the Interstate
Commerce Commission and removed from the domain of the anti-trust law.
The power of the Commission should be made thoroughgoing, so that it could
exercise complete supervision and control over the issue of securities
as well as over the raising and lowering of rates. As regards rates, at
least, this power should be summary. The power to investigate the financial
operations and accounts of the railways has been one of the most valuable
features in recent legislation. Power to make combinations and traffic
agreements should be explicitly conferred upon the railroads, the permission
of the Commission being first gained and the combination or agreement being
published in all its details. In the interest of the public the representatives
of the public should have complete power to see that the railroads do their
duty by the public, and as a matter of course this power should also be
exercised so as to see that no injustice is done to the railroads. The
shareholders, the employees and the shippers all have interests that must
be guarded. It is to the interest of all of them that no swindling stock
speculation should be allowed, and that there should be no improper issuance
of securities. The guiding intelligences necessary for the successful building
and successful management of railroads should receive ample remuneration;
but no man should be allowed to make money in connection with railroads
out of fraudulent over-capitalization and kindred stock-gambling performances;
there must be no defrauding of investors, oppression of the farmers and
business men who ship freight, or callous disregard of the rights and needs
of the employees. In addition to this the interests of the shareholders,
of the employees, and of the shippers should all be guarded as against
one another. To give any one of them undue and improper consideration is
to do injustice to the others. Rates must be made as low as is compatible
with giving proper returns to all the employees of the railroad, from the
highest to the lowest, and proper returns to the shareholders; but they
must not, for instance, be reduced in such fashion as to necessitate a
cut in the wages of the employees or the abolition of the proper and legitimate
profits of honest shareholders.

Telegraph and telephone companies engaged in interstate business should
be put under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

It is very earnestly to be wished that our people, through their representatives,
should act in this matter. It is hard to say whether most damage to the
country at large would come from entire failure on the part of the public
to supervise and control the actions of the great corporations, or from
the exercise of the necessary governmental power in a way which would do
injustice and wrong to the corporations. Both the preachers of an unrestricted
individualism, and the preachers of an oppression which would deny to able
men of business the just reward of their initiative and business sagacity,
are advocating policies that would be fraught with the gravest harm to
the whole country. To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying
corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort
to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous
to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure
in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing. On the other
hand, to attack these wrongs in that spirit of demagogy which can see wrong
only when committed by the man of wealth, and is dumb and blind in the
presence of wrong committed against men of property or by men of no property,
is exactly as evil as corruptly to defend the wrongdoing of men of wealth.
The war we wage must be waged against misconduct, against wrongdoing wherever
it is found; and we must stand heartily for the rights of every decent
man, whether he be a man of great wealth or a man who earns his livelihood
as a wage-worker or a tiller of the soil.

It is to the interest of all of us that there should be a premium put
upon individual initiative and individual capacity, and an ample reward
for the great directing intelligences alone competent to manage the great
business operations of to-day. It is well to keep in mind that exactly
as the anarchist is the worst enemy of liberty and the reactionary the
worst enemy of order, so the men who defend the rights of property have
most to fear from the wrongdoers of great wealth, and the men who are championing
popular rights have most to fear from the demagogues who in the name of
popular rights would do wrong to and oppress honest business men, honest
men of wealth; for the success of either type of wrongdoer necessarily
invites a violent reaction against the cause the wrongdoer nominally upholds.
In point of danger to the Nation there is nothing to choose between on
the one hand the corruptionist, the bribe-giver, the bribe-taker, the man
who employs his great talent to swindle his fellow-citizens on a large
scale, and, on the other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who,
whether from ignorance or from willingness to sacrifice his country to
his ambition, persuades well-meaning but wrong-headed men to try to destroy
the instruments upon which our prosperity mainly rests. Let each group
of men beware of and guard against the shortcomings to which that group
is itself most liable. Too often we see the business community in a spirit
of unhealthy class consciousness deplore the effort to hold to account
under the law the wealthy men who in their management of great corporations,
whether railroads, street railways, or other industrial enterprises, have
behaved in a way that revolts the conscience of the plain, decent people.
Such an attitude can not be condemned too severely, for men of property
should recognize that they jeopardize the rights of property when they
fail heartily to join in the effort to do away with the abuses of wealth.
On the other hand, those who advocate proper control on behalf of the public,
through the State, of these great corporations, and of the wealth engaged
on a giant scale in business operations, must ever keep in mind that unless
they do scrupulous justice to the corporation, unless they permit ample
profit, and cordially encourage capable men of business so long as they
act with honesty, they are striking at the root of our national well-being;
for in the long run, under the mere pressure of material distress, the
people as a whole would probably go back to the reign of an unrestricted
individualism rather than submit to a control by the State so drastic and
so foolish, conceived in a spirit of such unreasonable and narrow hostility
to wealth, as to prevent business operations from being profitable, and
therefore to bring ruin upon the entire business community, and ultimately
upon the entire body of citizens.

The opposition to Government control of these great corporations makes
its most effective effort in the shape of an appeal to the old doctrine
of State's rights. Of course there are many sincere men who now believe
in unrestricted individualism in business, just as there were formerly
many sincere men who believed in slavery--that is, in the unrestricted
right of an individual to own another individual. These men do not by themselves
have great weight, however. The effective fight against adequate Government
control and supervision of individual, and especially of corporate, wealth
engaged in interstate business is chiefly done under cover; and especially
under cover of an appeal to State's rights. It is not at all infrequent
to read in the same speech a denunciation of predatory wealth fostered
by special privilege and defiant of both the public welfare and law of
the land, and a denunciation of centralization in the Central Government
of the power to deal with this centralized and organized wealth. Of course
the policy set forth in such twin denunciations amounts to absolutely nothing,
for the first half is nullified by the second half. The chief reason, among
the many sound and compelling reasons, that led to the formation of the
National Government was the absolute need that the Union, and not the several
States, should deal with interstate and foreign commerce; and the power
to deal with interstate commerce was granted absolutely and plenarily to
the Central Government and was exercised completely as regards the only
instruments of interstate commerce known in those days--the waterways,
the highroads, as well as the partnerships of individuals who then conducted
all of what business there was. Interstate commerce is now chiefly conducted
by railroads; and the great corporation has supplanted the mass of small
partnerships or individuals. The proposal to make the National Government
supreme over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads
and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry
out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose,
for which the Constitution was rounded. It does not represent centralization.
It represents merely the acknowledgment of the patent fact that centralization
has already come in business. If this irresponsible outside business power
is to be controlled in the interest of the general public it can only be
controlled in one way--by giving adequate power of control to the one sovereignty
capable of exercising such power--the National Government. Forty or fifty
separate state governments can not exercise that power over corporations
doing business in most or all of them; first, because they absolutely lack
the authority to deal with interstate business in any form; and second,
because of the inevitable conflict of authority sure to arise in the effort
to enforce different kinds of state regulation, often inconsistent with
one another and sometimes oppressive in themselves. Such divided authority
can not regulate commerce with wisdom and effect. The Central Government
is the only power which, without oppression, can nevertheless thoroughly
and adequately control and supervise the large corporations. To abandon
the effort for National control means to abandon the effort for all adequate
control and yet to render likely continual bursts of action by State legislatures,
which can not achieve the purpose sought for, but which can do a great
deal of damage to the corporation without conferring any real benefit on
the public.

I believe that the more farsighted corporations are themselves coming
to recognize the unwisdom of the violent hostility they have displayed
during the last few years to regulation and control by the National Government
of combinations engaged in interstate business. The truth is that we who
believe in this movement of asserting and exercising a genuine control,
in the public interest, over these great corporations have to contend against
two sets of enemies, who, though nominally opposed to one another, are
really allies in preventing a proper solution of the problem. There are,
first, the big corporation men, and the extreme individualists among business
men, who genuinely believe in utterly unregulated business that is, in
the reign of plutocracy; and, second, the men who, being blind to the economic
movements of the day, believe in a movement of repression rather than of
regulation of corporations, and who denounce both the power of the railroads
and the exercise of the Federal power which alone can really control the
railroads. Those who believe in efficient national control, on the other
hand, do not in the least object to combinations; do not in the least object
to concentration in business administration. On the contrary, they favor
both, with the all important proviso that there shall be such publicity
about their workings, and such thoroughgoing control over them, as to insure
their being in the interest, and not against the interest, of the general
public. We do not object to the concentration of wealth and administration;
but we do believe in the distribution of the wealth in profits to the real
owners, and in securing to the public the full benefit of the concentrated
administration. We believe that with concentration in administration there
can come both be advantage of a larger ownership and of a more equitable
distribution of profits, and at the same time a better service to the commonwealth.
We believe that the administration should be for the benefit of the many;
and that greed and rascality, practiced on a large scale, should be punished
as relentlessly as if practiced on a small scale.

We do not for a moment believe that the problem will be solved by any
short and easy method. The solution will come only by pressing various
concurrent remedies. Some of these remedies must lie outside the domain
of all government. Some must lie outside the domain of the Federal Government.
But there is legislation which the Federal Government alone can enact and
which is absolutely vital in order to secure the attainment of our purpose.
Many laws are needed. There should be regulation by the National Government
of the great interstate corporations, including a simple method of account
keeping, publicity, supervision of the issue securities, abolition of rebates,
and of special privileges. There should be short time franchises for all
corporations engaged in public business; including the corporations which
get power from water rights. There should be National as well as State
guardianship of mines and forests. The labor legislation hereinafter referred
to should concurrently be enacted into law.

To accomplish this, means of course a certain increase in the use of--not
the creation of--power, by the Central Government. The power already exists;
it does not have to be created; the only question is whether it shall be
used or left idle--and meanwhile the corporations over which the power
ought to be exercised will not remain idle. Let those who object to this
increase in the use of the only power available, the national power, be
frank, and admit openly that they propose to abandon any effort to control
the great business corporations and to exercise supervision over the accumulation
and distribution of wealth; for such supervision and control can only come
through this particular kind of increase of power. We no more believe in
that empiricism which demand, absolutely unrestrained individualism than
we do in that empiricism which clamors for a deadening socialism which
would destroy all individual initiative and would ruin the country with
a completeness that not even an unrestrained individualism itself could
achieve. The danger to American democracy lies not in the least in the
concentration of administrative power in responsible and accountable hands.
It lies in having the power insufficiently concentrated, so that no one
can be held responsible to the people for its use. Concentrated power is
palpable, visible, responsible, easily reached, quickly held to account.
Power scattered through many administrators, many legislators, many men
who work behind and through legislators and administrators, is impalpable,
is unseen, is irresponsible, can not be reached, can not be held to account.
Democracy is in peril wherever the administration of political power is
scattered among a variety of men who work in secret, whose very names are
unknown to the common people. It is not in peril from any man who derives
authority from the people, who exercises it in sight of the people, and
who is from time to time compelled to give an account of its exercise to
the people.

LABOR.

There are many matters affecting labor and the status of the wage-worker
to which I should like to draw your attention, but an exhaustive discussion
of the problem in all its aspects is not now necessary. This administration
is nearing its end; and, moreover, under our form of government the solution
of the problem depends upon the action of the States as much as upon the
action of the Nation. Nevertheless, there are certain considerations which
I wish to set before you, because I hope that our people will more and
more keep them in mind. A blind and ignorant resistance to every effort
for the reform of abuses and for the readjustment of society to modern
industrial conditions represents not true conservatism, but an incitement
to the wildest radicalism; for wise radicalism and wise conservatism go
hand in hand, one bent on progress, the other bent on seeing that no change
is made unless in the right direction. I believe in a steady effort, or
perhaps it would be more accurate to say in steady efforts in many different
directions, to bring about a condition of affairs under which the men who
work with hand or with brain, the laborers, the superintendents, the men
who produce for the market and the men who find a market for the articles
produced, shall own a far greater share than at present of the wealth they
produce, and be enabled to invest it in the tools and instruments by which
all work is carried on. As far as possible I hope to see a frank recognition
of the advantages conferred by machinery, organization, and division of
labor, accompanied by an effort to bring about a larger share in the ownership
by wage-worker of railway, mill and factory. In farming, this simply means
that we wish to see the farmer own his own land; we do not wish to see
the farms so large that they become the property of absentee landlords
who farm them by tenants, nor yet so small that the farmer becomes like
a European peasant. Again, the depositors in our savings banks now number
over one-tenth of our entire population. These are all capitalists, who
through the savings banks loan their money to the workers--that is, in
many cases to themselves--to carry on their various industries. The more
we increase their number, the more we introduce the principles of cooperation
into our industry. Every increase in the number of small stockholders in
corporations is a good thing, for the same reasons; and where the employees
are the stockholders the result is particularly good. Very much of this
movement must be outside of anything that can be accomplished by legislation;
but legislation can do a good deal. Postal savings banks will make it easy
for the poorest to keep their savings in absolute safety. The regulation
of the national highways must be such that they shall serve all people
with equal justice. Corporate finances must be supervised so as to make
it far safer than at present for the man of small means to invest his money
in stocks. There must be prohibition of child labor, diminution of woman
labor, shortening of hours of all mechanical labor; stock watering should
be prohibited, and stock gambling so far as is possible discouraged. There
should be a progressive inheritance tax on large fortunes. Industrial education
should be encouraged. As far as possible we should lighten the burden of
taxation on the small man. We should put a premium upon thrift, hard work,
and business energy; but these qualities cease to be the main factors in
accumulating a fortune long before that fortune reaches a point where it
would be seriously affected by any inheritance tax such as I propose. It
is eminently right that the Nation should fix the terms upon which the
great fortunes are inherited. They rarely do good and they often do harm
to those who inherit them in their entirety.

PROTECTION FOR WAGEWORKERS.

The above is the merest sketch, hardly even a sketch in outline, of
the reforms for which we should work. But there is one matter with which
the Congress should deal at this session. There should no longer be any
paltering with the question of taking care of the wage-workers who, under
our present industrial system, become killed, crippled, or worn out as
part of the regular incidents of a given business. The majority of wageworkers
must have their rights secured for them by State action; but the National
Government should legislate in thoroughgoing and far-reaching fashion not
only for all employees of the National Government, but for all persons
engaged in interstate commerce. The object sought for could be achieved
to a measurable degree, as far as those killed or crippled are concerned,
by proper employers' liability laws. As far as concerns those who have
been worn out, I call your attention to the fact that definite steps toward
providing old-age pensions have been taken in many of our private industries.
These may be indefinitely extended through voluntary association and contributory
schemes, or through the agency of savings banks, as under the recent Massachusetts
plan. To strengthen these practical measures should be our immediate duty;
it is not at present necessary to consider the larger and more general
governmental schemes that most European governments have found themselves
obliged to adopt.

Our present system, or rather no system, works dreadful wrong, and is
of benefit to only one class of people--the lawyers. When a workman is
injured what he needs is not an expensive and doubtful lawsuit, but the
certainty of relief through immediate administrative action. The number
of accidents which result in the death or crippling of wageworkers, in
the Union at large, is simply appalling; in a very few years it runs up
a total far in excess of the aggregate of the dead and wounded in any modern
war. No academic theory about "freedom of contract" or "constitutional
liberty to contract" should be permitted to interfere with this and similar
movements. Progress in civilization has everywhere meant a limitation and
regulation of contract. I call your especial attention to the bulletin
of the Bureau of Labor which gives a statement of the methods of treating
the unemployed in European countries, as this is a subject which in Germany,
for instance, is treated in connection with making provision for worn-out
and crippled workmen.

Pending a thoroughgoing investigation and action there is certain legislation
which should be enacted at once. The law, passed at the last session of
the Congress, granting compensation to certain classes of employees of
the Government, should be extended to include all employees of the Government
and should be made more liberal in its terms. There is no good ground for
the distinction made in the law between those engaged in hazardous occupations
and those not so engaged. If a man is injured or killed in any line of
work, it was hazardous in his case. Whether 1 per cent or 10 per cent of
those following a given occupation actually suffer injury or death ought
not to have any bearing on the question of their receiving compensation.
It is a grim logic which says to an injured employee or to the dependents
of one killed that he or they are entitled to no compensation because very
few people other than he have been injured or killed in that occupation.
Perhaps one of the most striking omissions in the law is that it does not
embrace peace officers and others whose lives may be sacrificed in enforcing
the laws of the United States. The terms of the act providing compensation
should be made more liberal than in the present act. A year's compensation
is not adequate for a wage-earner's family in the event of his death by
accident in the course of his employment. And in the event of death occurring,
say, ten or eleven months after the accident, the family would only receive
as compensation the equivalent of one or two months' earnings. In this
respect the generosity of the United States towards its employees compares
most unfavorably with that of every country in Europe--even the poorest.

The terms of the act are also a hardship in prohibiting payment in cases
where the accident is in any way due to the negligence of the employee.
It is inevitable that daily familiarity with danger will lead men to take
chances that can be construed into negligence. So well is this recognized
that in practically all countries in the civilized world, except the United
States, only a great degree of negligence acts as a bar to securing compensation.
Probably in no other respect is our legislation, both State and National,
so far behind practically the entire civilized world as in the matter of
liability and compensation for accidents in industry. It is humiliating
that at European international congresses on accidents the United States
should be singled out as the most belated among the nations in respect
to employers' liability legislation. This Government is itself a large
employer of labor, and in its dealings with its employees it should set
a standard in this country which would place it on a par with the most
progressive countries in Europe. The laws of the United States in this
respect and the laws of European countries have been summarized in a recent
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, and no American who reads this summary
can fail to be struck by the great contrast between our practices and theirs--a
contrast not in any sense to our credit.

The Congress should without further delay pass a model employers' liability
law for the District of Columbia. The employers' liability act recently
declared unconstitutional, on account of apparently including in its provisions
employees engaged in intrastate commerce as well as those engaged in interstate
commerce, has been held by the local courts to be still in effect so far
as its provisions apply to District of Columbia. There should be no ambiguity
on this point. If there is any doubt on the subject, the law should be
reenacted with special reference to the District of Columbia. This act,
however, applies only to employees of common carriers. In all other occupations
the liability law of the District is the old common law. The severity and
injustice of the common law in this matter has been in some degree or another
modified in the majority of our States, and the only jurisdiction under
the exclusive control of the Congress should be ahead and not behind the
States of the Union in this respect. A comprehensive employers' liability
law should be passed for the District of Columbia.

I renew my recommendation made in a previous message that half-holidays
be granted during summer to all wageworkers in Government employ.

I also renew my recommendation that the principle of the eight-hour
day should as rapidly and as far as practicable be extended to the entire
work being carried on by the Government; the present law should be amended
to embrace contracts on those public works which the present wording of
the act seems to exclude.

THE COURTS.

I most earnestly urge upon the Congress the duty of increasing the totally
inadequate salaries now given to our Judges. On the whole there is no body
of public servants who do as valuable work, nor whose moneyed reward is
so inadequate compared to their work. Beginning with the Supreme Court,
the Judges should have their salaries doubled. It is not befitting the
dignity of the Nation that its most honored public servants should be paid
sums so small compared to what they would earn in private life that the
performance of public service by them implies an exceedingly heavy pecuniary
sacrifice.

It is earnestly to be desired that some method should be devised for
doing away with the long delays which now obtain in the administration
of justice, and which operate with peculiar severity against persons of
small means, and favor only the very criminals whom it is most desirable
to punish. These long delays in the final decisions of cases make in the
aggregate a crying evil; and a remedy should be devised. Much of this intolerable
delay is due to improper regard paid to technicalities which are a mere
hindrance to justice. In some noted recent cases this over-regard for technicalities
has resulted in a striking denial of justice, and flagrant wrong to the
body politic.

At the last election certain leaders of organized labor made a violent
and sweeping attack upon the entire judiciary of the country, an attack
couched in such terms as to include the most upright, honest and broad-minded
judges, no less than those of narrower mind and more restricted outlook.
It was the kind of attack admirably fitted to prevent any successful attempt
to reform abuses of the judiciary, because it gave the champions of the
unjust judge their eagerly desired opportunity to shift their ground into
a championship of just judges who were unjustly assailed. Last year, before
the House Committee on the Judiciary, these same labor leaders formulated
their demands, specifying the bill that contained them, refusing all compromise,
stating they wished the principle of that bill or nothing. They insisted
on a provision that in a labor dispute no injunction should issue except
to protect a property right, and specifically provided that the right to
carry on business should not be construed as a property right; and in a
second provision their bill made legal in a labor dispute any act or agreement
by or between two or more persons that would not have been unlawful if
done by a single person. In other words. this bill legalized blacklisting
and boycotting in every form, legalizing, for instance, those forms of
the secondary boycott which the anthracite coal strike commission so unreservedly
condemned; while the right to carry on a business was explicitly taken
out from under that protection which the law throws over property. The
demand was made that there should be trial by jury in contempt cases, thereby
most seriously impairing the authority of the courts. All this represented
a course of policy which, if carried out, would mean the enthronement of
class privilege in its crudest and most brutal form, and the destruction
of one of the most essential functions of the judiciary in all civilized
lands.

The violence of the crusade for this legislation, and its complete failure,
illustrate two truths which it is essential our people should learn. In
the first place, they ought to teach the workingman, the laborer, the wageworker,
that by demanding what is improper and impossible he plays into the hands
of his foes. Such a crude and vicious attack upon the courts, even if it
were temporarily successful, would inevitably in the end cause a violent
reaction and would band the great mass of citizens together, forcing them
to stand by all the judges, competent and incompetent alike, rather than
to see the wheels of justice stopped. A movement of this kind can ultimately
result in nothing but damage to those in whose behalf it is nominally undertaken.
This is a most healthy truth, which it is wise for all our people to learn.
Any movement based on that class hatred which at times assumes the name
of "class consciousness" is certain ultimately to fail, and if it temporarily
succeeds, to do far-reaching damage. "Class consciousness," where it is
merely another name for the odious vice of class selfishness, is equally
noxious whether in an employer's association or in a workingman's association.
The movement in question was one in which the appeal was made to all workingmen
to vote primarily, not as American citizens, but as individuals of a certain
class in society. Such an appeal in the first place revolts the more high-minded
and far-sighted among the persons to whom it is addressed, and in the second
place tends to arouse a strong antagonism among all other classes of citizens,
whom it therefore tends to unite against the very organization on whose
behalf it is issued. The result is therefore unfortunate from every standpoint.
This healthy truth, by the way, will be learned by the socialists if they
ever succeed in establishing in this country an important national party
based on such class consciousness and selfish class interest.

The wageworkers, the workingmen, the laboring men of the country, by
the way in which they repudiated the effort to get them to cast their votes
in response to an appeal to class hatred, have emphasized their sound patriotism
and Americanism. The whole country has cause to fell pride in this attitude
of sturdy independence, in this uncompromising insistence upon acting simply
as good citizens, as good Americans, without regard to fancied--and improper--class
interests. Such an attitude is an object-lesson in good citizenship to
the entire nation.

But the extreme reactionaries, the persons who blind themselves to the
wrongs now and then committed by the courts on laboring men, should also
think seriously as to what such a movement as this portends. The judges
who have shown themselves able and willing effectively to check the dishonest
activity of the very rich man who works iniquity by the mismanagement of
corporations, who have shown themselves alert to do justice to the wageworker,
and sympathetic with the needs of the mass of our people, so that the dweller
in the tenement houses, the man who practices a dangerous trade, the man
who is crushed by excessive hours of labor, feel that their needs are understood
by the courts--these judges are the real bulwark of the courts; these judges,
the judges of the stamp of the president-elect, who have been fearless
in opposing labor when it has gone wrong, but fearless also in holding
to strict account corporations that work iniquity, and far-sighted in seeing
that the workingman gets his rights, are the men of all others to whom
we owe it that the appeal for such violent and mistaken legislation has
fallen on deaf ears, that the agitation for its passage proved to be without
substantial basis. The courts are jeopardized primarily by the action of
those Federal and State judges who show inability or unwillingness to put
a stop to the wrongdoing of very rich men under modern industrial conditions,
and inability or unwillingness to give relief to men of small means or
wageworkers who are crushed down by these modern industrial conditions;
who, in other words, fail to understand and apply the needed remedies for
the new wrongs produced by the new and highly complex social and industrial
civilization which has grown up in the last half century.

The rapid changes in our social and industrial life which have attended
this rapid growth have made it necessary that, in applying to concrete
cases the great rule of right laid down in our Constitution, there should
be a full understanding and appreciation of the new conditions to which
the rules are to be applied. What would have been an infringement upon
liberty half a century ago may be the necessary safeguard of liberty to-day.
What would have been an injury to property then may be necessary to the
enjoyment of property now. Every judicial decision involves two terms--one,
as interpretation of the law; the other, the understanding of the facts
to which it is to be applied. The great mass of our judicial officers are,
I believe, alive to those changes of conditions which so materially affect
the performance of their judicial duties. Our judicial system is sound
and effective at core, and it remains, and must ever be maintained, as
the safeguard of those principles of liberty and justice which stand at
the foundation of American institutions; for, as Burke finely said, when
liberty and justice are separated, neither is safe. There are, however,
some members of the judicial body who have lagged behind in their understanding
of these great and vital changes in the body politic, whose minds have
never been opened to the new applications of the old principles made necessary
by the new conditions. Judges of this stamp do lasting harm by their decisions,
because they convince poor men in need of protection that the courts of
the land are profoundly ignorant of and out of sympathy with their needs,
and profoundly indifferent or hostile to any proposed remedy. To such men
it seems a cruel mockery to have any court decide against them on the ground
that it desires to preserve "liberty" in a purely technical form, by withholding
liberty in any real and constructive sense. It is desirable that the legislative
body should possess, and wherever necessary exercise, the power to determine
whether in a given case employers and employees are not on an equal footing,
so that the necessities of the latter compel them to submit to such exactions
as to hours and conditions of labor as unduly to tax their strength; and
only mischief can result when such determination is upset on the ground
that there must be no "interference with the liberty to contract"--often
a merely academic "liberty," the exercise of which is the negation of real
liberty.

There are certain decisions by various courts which have been exceedingly
detrimental to the rights of wageworkers. This is true of all the decisions
that decide that men and women are, by the Constitution, "guaranteed their
liberty" to contract to enter a dangerous occupation, or to work an undesirable
or improper number of hours, or to work in unhealthy surroundings; and
therefore can not recover damages when maimed in that occupation and can
not be forbidden to work what the legislature decides is an excessive number
of hours, or to carry on the work under conditions which the legislature
decides to be unhealthy. The most dangerous occupations are often the poorest
paid and those where the hours of work are longest; and in many cases those
who go into them are driven by necessity so great that they have practically
no alternative. Decisions such as those alluded to above nullify the legislative
effort to protect the wage-workers who most need protection from those
employers who take advantage of their grinding need. They halt or hamper
the movement for securing better and more equitable conditions of labor.
The talk about preserving to the misery-hunted beings who make contracts
for such service their "liberty" to make them, is either to speak in a
spirit of heartless irony or else to show an utter lack of knowledge of
the conditions of life among the great masses of our fellow-countrymen,
a lack which unfits a judge to do good service just as it would unfit any
executive or legislative officer.

There is also, I think, ground for the belief that substantial injustice
is often suffered by employees in consequence of the custom of courts issuing
temporary injunctions without notice to them, and punishing them for contempt
of court in instances where, as a matter of fact, they have no knowledge
of any proceedings. Outside of organized labor there is a widespread feeling
that this system often works great injustice to wageworkers when their
efforts to better their working condition result in industrial disputes.
A temporary injunction procured ex parte may as a matter of fact have all
the effect of a permanent injunction in causing disaster to the wageworkers'
side in such a dispute. Organized labor is chafing under the unjust restraint
which comes from repeated resort to this plan of procedure. Its discontent
has been unwisely expressed, and often improperly expressed, but there
is a sound basis for it, and the orderly and law-abiding people of a community
would be in a far stronger position for upholding the courts if the undoubtedly
existing abuses could be provided against.

Such proposals as those mentioned above as advocated by the extreme
labor leaders contain the vital error of being class legislation of the
most offensive kind, and even if enacted into law I believe that the law
would rightly be held unconstitutional. Moreover, the labor people are
themselves now beginning to invoke the use of the power of injunction.
During the last ten years, and within my own knowledge, at least fifty
injunctions have been obtained by labor unions in New York City alone,
most of them being to protect the union label (a "property right"), but
some being obtained for other reasons against employers. The power of injunction
is a great equitable remedy, which should on no account be destroyed. But
safeguards should be erected against its abuse. I believe that some such
provisions as those I advocated a year ago for checking the abuse of the
issuance of temporary injunctions should be adopted. In substance, provision
should be made that no injunction or temporary restraining order issue
otherwise than on notice, except where irreparable injury would otherwise
result; and in such case a hearing on the merits of the order should be
had within a short fixed period, and, if not then continued after hearing,
it should forthwith lapse. Decisions should be rendered immediately, and
the chance of delay minimized in every way. Moreover, I believe that the
procedure should be sharply defined, and the judge required minutely to
state the particulars both of his action and of his reasons therefor, so
that the Congress can, if it desires, examine and investigate the same.

The chief lawmakers in our country may be, and often are, the judges,
because they are the final seat of authority. Every time they interpret
contract, property, vested rights, due process of law, liberty, they necessarily
enact into law parts of a system of social philosophy, and as such interpretation
is fundamental, they give direction to all law-making. The decisions of
the courts on economic and social questions depend upon their economic
and social philosophy; and for the peaceful progress of our people during
the twentieth century we shall owe most to those judges who hold to a twentieth
century economic and social philosophy and not to a long outgrown philosophy,
which was itself the product of primitive economic conditions. Of course
a judge's views on progressive social philosophy are entirely second in
importance to his possession of a high and fine character; which means
the possession of such elementary virtues as honesty, courage, and fair-mindedness.
The judge who owes his election to pandering to demagogic sentiments or
class hatreds and prejudices, and the judge who owes either his election
or his appointment to the money or the favor of a great corporation, are
alike unworthy to sit on the bench, are alike traitors to the people; and
no profundity of legal learning, or correctness of abstract conviction
on questions of public policy, can serve as an offset to such shortcomings.
But it is also true that judges, like executives and legislators, should
hold sound views on the questions of public policy which are of vital interest
to the people.

The legislators and executives are chosen to represent the people in
enacting and administering the laws. The judges are not chosen to represent
the people in this sense. Their function is to interpret the laws. The
legislators are responsible for the laws; the judges for the spirit in
which they interpret and enforce the laws. We stand aloof from the reckless
agitators who would make the judges mere pliant tools of popular prejudice
and passion; and we stand aloof from those equally unwise partisans of
reaction and privilege who deny the proposition that, inasmuch as judges
are chosen to serve the interests of the whole people, they should strive
to find out what those interests are, and, so far as they conscientiously
can, should strive to give effect to popular conviction when deliberately
and duly expressed by the lawmaking body. The courts are to be highly commended
and staunchly upheld when they set their faces against wrongdoing or tyranny
by a majority; but they are to be blamed when they fail to recognize under
a government like ours the deliberate judgment of the majority as to a
matter of legitimate policy, when duly expressed by the legislature. Such
lawfully expressed and deliberate judgment should be given effect by the
courts, save in the extreme and exceptional cases where there has been
a clear violation of a constitutional provision. Anything like frivolity
or wantonness in upsetting such clearly taken governmental action is a
grave offense against the Republic. To protest against tyranny, to protect
minorities from oppression, to nullify an act committed in a spasm of popular
fury, is to render a service to the Republic. But for the courts to arrogate
to themselves functions which properly belong to the legislative bodies
is all wrong, and in the end works mischief. The people should not be permitted
to pardon evil and slipshod legislation on the theory that the court will
set it right; they should be taught that the right way to get rid of a
bad law is to have the legislature repeal it, and not to have the courts
by ingenious hair-splitting nullify it. A law may be unwise and improper;
but it should not for these reasons be declared unconstitutional by a strained
interpretation, for the result of such action is to take away from the
people at large their sense of responsibility and ultimately to destroy
their capacity for orderly self restraint and self government. Under such
a popular government as ours, rounded on the theory that in the long run
the will of the people is supreme, the ultimate safety of the Nation can
only rest in training and guiding the people so that what they will shall
be right, and not in devising means to defeat their will by the technicalities
of strained construction.

For many of the shortcomings of justice in our country our people as
a whole are themselves to blame, and the judges and juries merely bear
their share together with the public as a whole. It is discreditable to
us as a people that there should be difficulty in convicting murderers,
or in bringing to justice men who as public servants have been guilty of
corruption, or who have profited by the corruption of public servants.
The result is equally unfortunate, whether due to hairsplitting technicalities
in the interpretation of law by judges, to sentimentality and class consciousness
on the part of juries, or to hysteria and sensationalism in the daily press.
For much of this failure of justice no responsibility whatever lies on
rich men as such. We who make up the mass of the people can not shift the
responsibility from our own shoulders. But there is an important part of
the failure which has specially to do with inability to hold to proper
account men of wealth who behave badly.

The chief breakdown is in dealing with the new relations that arise
from the mutualism, the interdependence of our time. Every new social relation
begets a new type of wrongdoing--of sin, to use an old-fashioned word--and
many years always elapse before society is able to turn this sin into crime
which can be effectively punished at law. During the lifetime of the older
men now alive the social relations have changed far more rapidly than in
the preceding two centuries. The immense growth of corporations, of business
done by associations, and the extreme strain and pressure of modern life,
have produced conditions which render the public confused as to who its
really dangerous foes are; and among the public servants who have not only
shared this confusion, but by some of their acts have increased it, are
certain judges. Marked inefficiency has been shown in dealing with corporations
and in re-settling the proper attitude to be taken by the public not only
towards corporations, but towards labor and towards the social questions
arising out of the factory system and the enormous growth of our great
cities.

The huge wealth that has been accumulated by a few individuals of recent
years, in what has amounted to a social and industrial revolution, has
been as regards some of these individuals made possible only by the improper
use of the modern corporation. A certain type of modern corporation, with
its officers and agents, its many issues of securities, and its constant
consolidation with allied undertakings, finally becomes an instrument so
complex as to contain a greater number of elements that, under various
judicial decisions, lend themselves to fraud and oppression than any device
yet evolved in the human brain. Corporations are necessary instruments
of modern business. They have been permitted to become a menace largely
because the governmental representatives of the people have worked slowly
in providing for adequate control over them.

The chief offender in any given case may be an executive, a legislature,
or a judge. Every executive head who advises violent, instead of gradual,
action, or who advocates ill-considered and sweeping measures of reform
(especially if they are tainted with vindictiveness and disregard for the
rights of the minority) is particularly blameworthy. The several legislatures
are responsible for the fact that our laws are often prepared with slovenly
haste and lack of consideration. Moreover, they are often prepared, and
still more frequently amended during passage, at the suggestion of the
very parties against whom they are afterwards enforced. Our great clusters
of corporations, huge trusts and fabulously wealthy multi-millionaires,
employ the very best lawyers they can obtain to pick flaws in these statutes
after their passage; but they also employ a class of secret agents who
seek, under the advice of experts, to render hostile legislation innocuous
by making it unconstitutional, often through the insertion of what appear
on their face to be drastic and sweeping provisions against the interests
of the parties inspiring them; while the demagogues, the corrupt creatures
who introduce blackmailing schemes to "strike" corporations, and all who
demand extreme, and undesirably radical, measures, show themselves to be
the worst enemies of the very public whose loud-mouthed champions they
profess to be. A very striking illustration of the consequences of carelessness
in the preparation of a statute was the employers' liability law of 1906.
In the cases arising under that law, four out of six courts of first instance
held it unconstitutional; six out of nine justices of the Supreme Court
held that its subject-matter was within the province of congressional action;
and four of the nine justices held it valid. It was, however, adjudged
unconstitutional by a bare majority of the court--five to four. It was
surely a very slovenly piece of work to frame the legislation in such shape
as to leave the question open at all.

Real damage has been done by the manifold and conflicting interpretations
of the interstate commerce law. Control over the great corporations doing
interstate business can be effective only if it is vested with full power
in an administrative department, a branch of the Federal executive, carrying
out a Federal law; it can never be effective if a divided responsibility
is left in both the States and the Nation; it can never be effective if
left in the hands of the courts to be decided by lawsuits.

The courts hold a place of peculiar and deserved sanctity under our
form of government. Respect for the law is essential to the permanence
of our institutions; and respect for the law is largely conditioned upon
respect for the courts. It is an offense against the Republic to say anything
which can weaken this respect, save for the gravest reason and in the most
carefully guarded manner. Our judges should be held in peculiar honor;
and the duty of respectful and truthful comment and criticism, which should
be binding when we speak of anybody, should be especially binding when
we speak of them. On an average they stand above any other servants of
the community, and the greatest judges have reached the high level held
by those few greatest patriots whom the whole country delights to honor.
But we must face the fact that there are wise and unwise judges, just as
there are wise and unwise executives and legislators. When a president
or a governor behaves improperly or unwisely, the remedy is easy, for his
term is short; the same is true with the legislator, although not to the
same degree, for he is one of many who belong to some given legislative
body, and it is therefore less easy to fix his personal responsibility
and hold him accountable therefor. With a judge, who, being human, is also
likely to err, but whose tenure is for life, there is no similar way of
holding him to responsibility. Under ordinary conditions the only forms
of pressure to which he is in any way amenable are public opinion and the
action of his fellow judges. It is the last which is most immediately effective,
and to which we should look for the reform of abuses. Any remedy applied
from without is fraught with risk. It is far better, from every standpoint,
that the remedy should come from within. In no other nation in the world
do the courts wield such vast and far-reaching power as in the United States.
All that is necessary is that the courts as a whole should exercise this
power with the farsighted wisdom already shown by those judges who scan
the future while they act in the present. Let them exercise this great
power not only honestly and bravely, but with wise insight into the needs
and fixed purposes of the people, so that they may do justice and work
equity, so that they may protect all persons in their rights, and yet break
down the barriers of privilege, which is the foe of right.

FORESTS.

If there is any one duty which more than another we owe it to our children
and our children's children to perform at once, it is to save the forests
of this country, for they constitute the first and most important element
in the conservation of the natural resources of the country. There are
of course two kinds of natural resources, One is the kind which can only
be used as part of a process of exhaustion; this is true of mines, natural
oil and gas wells, and the like. The other, and of course ultimately by
far the most important, includes the resources which can be improved in
the process of wise use; the soil, the rivers, and the forests come under
this head. Any really civilized nation will so use all of these three great
national assets that the nation will have their benefit in the future.
Just as a farmer, after all his life making his living from his farm, will,
if he is an expert farmer, leave it as an asset of increased value to his
son, so we should leave our national domain to our children, increased
in value and not worn out. There are small sections of our own country,
in the East and the West, in the Adriondacks, the White Mountains, and
the Appalachians, and in the Rocky Mountains, where we can already see
for ourselves the damage in the shape of permanent injury to the soil and
the river systems which comes from reckless deforestation. It matters not
whether this deforestation is due to the actual reckless cutting of timber,
to the fires that inevitably follow such reckless cutting of timber, or
to reckless and uncontrolled grazing, especially by the great migratory
bands of sheep, the unchecked wandering of which over the country means
destruction to forests and disaster to the small home makers, the settlers
of limited means.

Shortsighted persons, or persons blinded to the future by desire to
make money in every way out of the present, sometimes speak as if no great
damage would be done by the reckless destruction of our forests. It is
difficult to have patience with the arguments of these persons. Thanks
to our own recklessness in the use of our splendid forests, we have already
crossed the verge of a timber famine in this country, and no measures that
we now take can, at least for many years, undo the mischief that has already
been done. But we can prevent further mischief being done; and it would
be in the highest degree reprehensible to let any consideration of temporary
convenience or temporary cost interfere with such action, especially as
regards the National Forests which the nation can now, at this very moment,
control.

All serious students of the question are aware of the great damage that
has been done in the Mediterranean countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa
by deforestation. The similar damage that has been done in Eastern Asia
is less well known. A recent investigation into conditions in North China
by Mr. Frank N. Meyer, of the Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States
Department of Agriculture, has incidentally furnished in very striking
fashion proof of the ruin that comes from reckless deforestation of mountains,
and of the further fact that the damage once done may prove practically
irreparable. So important are these investigations that I herewith attach
as an appendix to my message certain photographs showing present conditions
in China. They show in vivid fashion the appalling desolation, taking the
shape of barren mountains and gravel and sand-covered plains, which immediately
follows and depends upon the deforestation of the mountains. Not many centuries
ago the country of northern China was one of the most fertile and beautiful
spots in the entire world, and was heavily forested. We know this not only
from the old Chinese records, but from the accounts given by the traveler,
Marco Polo. He, for instance, mentions that in visiting the provinces of
Shansi and Shensi he observed many plantations of mulberry trees. Now there
is hardly a single mulberry tree in either of these provinces, and the
culture of the silkworm has moved farther south, to regions of atmospheric
moisture. As an illustration of the complete change in the rivers, we may
take Polo's statement that a certain river, the Hun Ho, was so large and
deep that merchants ascended it from the sea with heavily laden boats;
today this river is simply a broad sandy bed, with shallow, rapid currents
wandering hither and thither across it, absolutely unnavigable. But we
do not have to depend upon written records. The dry wells, and the wells
with water far below the former watermark, bear testimony to the good days
of the past and the evil days of the present. Wherever the native vegetation
has been allowed to remain, as, for instance, here and there around a sacred
temple or imperial burying ground, there are still huge trees and tangled
jungle, fragments of the glorious ancient forests. The thick, matted forest
growth formerly covered the mountains to their summits. All natural factors
favored this dense forest growth, and as long as it was permitted to exist
the plains at the foot of the mountains were among the most fertile on
the globe, and the whole country was a garden. Not the slightest effort
was made, however, to prevent the unchecked cutting of the trees, or to
secure reforestation. Doubtless for many centuries the tree-cutting by
the inhabitants of the mountains worked but slowly in bringing about the
changes that have now come to pass; doubtless for generations the inroads
were scarcely noticeable. But there came a time when the forest had shrunk
sufficiently to make each year's cutting a serious matter, and from that
time on the destruction proceeded with appalling rapidity; for of course
each year of destruction rendered the forest less able to recuperate, less
able to resist next year's inroad. Mr. Meyer describes the ceaseless progress
of the destruction even now, when there is so little left to destroy. Every
morning men and boys go out armed with mattox or axe, scale the steepest
mountain sides, and cut down and grub out, root and branch, the small trees
and shrubs still to be found. The big trees disappeared centuries ago,
so that now one of these is never seen save in the neighborhood of temples,
where they are artificially protected; and even here it takes all the watch
and care of the tree-loving priests to prevent their destruction. Each
family, each community, where there is no common care exercised in the
interest of all of them to prevent deforestation, finds its profit in the
immediate use of the fuel which would otherwise be used by some other family
or some other community. In the total absence of regulation of the matter
in the interest of the whole people, each small group is inevitably pushed
into a policy of destruction which can not afford to take thought for the
morrow. This is just one of those matters which it is fatal to leave to
unsupervised individual control. The forest can only be protected by the
State, by the Nation; and the liberty of action of individuals must be
conditioned upon what the State or Nation determines to be necessary for
the common safety.

The lesson of deforestation in China is a lesson which mankind should
have learned many times already from what has occurred in other places.
Denudation leaves naked soil; then gullying cuts down to the bare rock;
and meanwhile the rock-waste buries the bottomlands. When the soil is gone,
men must go; and the process does not take long.

This ruthless destruction of the forests in northern China has brought
about, or has aided in bringing about, desolation, just as the destruction
of the forests in central Asia aid in bringing ruin to the once rich central
Asian cities; just as the destruction of the forest in northern Africa
helped towards the ruin of a region that was a fertile granary in Roman
days. Shortsighted man, whether barbaric, semi-civilized, or what he mistakenly
regards as fully civilized, when he has destroyed the forests, has rendered
certain the ultimate destruction of the land itself. In northern China
the mountains are now such as are shown by the accompanying photographs,
absolutely barren peaks. Not only have the forests been destroyed, but
because of their destruction the soil has been washed off the naked rock.
The terrible consequence is that it is impossible now to undo the damage
that has been done. Many centuries would have to pass before soil would
again collect, or could be made to collect, in sufficient quantity once
more to support the old-time forest growth. In consequence the Mongol Desert
is practically extending eastward over northern China. The climate has
changed and is still changing. It has changed even within the last half
century, as the work of tree destruction has been consummated. The great
masses of arboreal vegetation on the mountains formerly absorbed the heat
of the sun and sent up currents of cool air which brought the moisture-laden
clouds lower and forced them to precipitate in rain a part of their burden
of water. Now that there is no vegetation, the barren mountains, scorched
by the sun, send up currents of heated air which drive away instead of
attracting the rain clouds, and cause their moisture to be disseminated.
In consequence, instead of the regular and plentiful rains which existed
in these regions of China when the forests were still in evidence, the
unfortunate inhabitants of the deforested lands now see their crops wither
for lack of rainfall, while the seasons grow more and more irregular; and
as the air becomes dryer certain crops refuse longer to grow at all. That
everything dries out faster than formerly is shown by the fact that the
level of the wells all over the land has sunk perceptibly, many of them
having become totally dry. In addition to the resulting agricultural distress,
the watercourses have changed. Formerly they were narrow and deep, with
an abundance of clear water the year around; for the roots and humus of
the forests caught the rainwater and let it escape by slow, regular seepage.
They have now become broad, shallow stream beds, in which muddy water trickles
in slender currents during the dry seasons, while when it rains there are
freshets, and roaring muddy torrents come tearing down, bringing disaster
and destruction everywhere. Moreover, these floods and freshets, which
diversify the general dryness, wash away from the mountain sides, and either
wash away or cover in the valleys, the rich fertile soil which it took
tens of thousands of years for Nature to form; and it is lost forever,
and until the forests grow again it can not be replaced. The sand and stones
from the mountain sides are washed loose and come rolling down to cover
the arable lands, and in consequence, throughout this part of China, many
formerly rich districts are now sandy wastes, useless for human cultivation
and even for pasture. The cities have been of course seriously affected,
for the streams have gradually ceased to be navigable. There is testimony
that even within the memory of men now living there has been a serious
diminution of the rainfall of northeastern China. The level of the Sungari
River in northern Manchuria has been sensibly lowered during the last fifty
years, at least partly as the result of the indiscriminate rutting of the
forests forming its watershed. Almost all the rivers of northern China
have become uncontrollable, and very dangerous to the dwellers along their
banks, as a direct result of the destruction of the forests. The journey
from Pekin to Jehol shows in melancholy fashion how the soil has been washed
away from whole valleys, so that they have been converted into deserts.

In northern China this disastrous process has gone on so long and has
proceeded so far that no complete remedy could be applied. There are certain
mountains in China from which the soil is gone so utterly that only the
slow action of the ages could again restore it; although of course much
could be done to prevent the still further eastward extension of the Mongolian
Desert if the Chinese Government would act at once. The accompanying cuts
from photographs show the inconceivable desolation of the barren mountains
in which certain of these rivers rise--mountains, be it remembered, which
formerly supported dense forests of larches and firs, now unable to produce
any wood, and because of their condition a source of danger to the whole
country. The photographs also show the same rivers after they have passed
through the mountains, the beds having become broad and sandy because of
the deforestation of the mountains. One of the photographs shows a caravan
passing through a valley. Formerly, when the mountains were forested, it
was thickly peopled by prosperous peasants. Now the floods have carried
destruction all over the land and the valley is a stony desert. Another
photograph shows a mountain road covered with the stones and rocks that
are brought down in the rainy season from the mountains which have already
been deforested by human hands. Another shows a pebbly river-bed in southern
Manchuria where what was once a great stream has dried up owing to the
deforestation in the mountains. Only some scrub wood is left, which will
disappear within a half century. Yet another shows the effect of one of
the washouts, destroying an arable mountain side, these washouts being
due to the removal of all vegetation; yet in this photograph the foreground
shows that reforestation is still a possibility in places.

What has thus happened in northern China, what has happened in Central
Asia, in Palestine, in North Africa, in parts of the Mediterranean countries
of Europe, will surely happen in our country if we do not exercise that
wise forethought which should be one of the chief marks of any people calling
itself civilized. Nothing should be permitted to stand in the way of the
preservation of the forests, and it is criminal to permit individuals to
purchase a little gain for themselves through the destruction of forests
when this destruction is fatal to the well-being of the whole country in
the future.

INLAND WATERWAYS.

Action should be begun forthwith, during the present session of the
Congress, for the improvement of our inland waterways--action which will
result in giving us not only navigable but navigated rivers. We have spent
hundreds of millions of dollars upon these waterways, yet the traffic on
nearly all of them is steadily declining. This condition is the direct
result of the absence of any comprehensive and far-seeing plan of waterway
improvement, Obviously we can not continue thus to expend the revenues
of the Government without return. It is poor business to spend money for
inland navigation unless we get it.

Inquiry into the condition of the Mississippi and its principal tributaries
reveals very many instances of the utter waste caused by the methods which
have hitherto obtained for the so-called "improvement" of navigation. A
striking instance is supplied by the "improvement" of the Ohio, which,
begun in 1824, was continued under a single plan for half a century. In
1875 a new plan was adopted and followed for a quarter of a century. In
1902 still a different plan was adopted and has since been pursued at a
rate which only promises a navigable river in from twenty to one hundred
years longer.

Such shortsighted, vacillating, and futile methods are accompanied by
decreasing water-borne commerce and increasing traffic congestion on land,
by increasing floods, and by the waste of public money. The remedy lies
in abandoning the methods which have so signally failed and adopting new
ones in keeping with the needs and demands of our people.

In a report on a measure introduced at the first session of the present
Congress, the Secretary of War said: "The chief defect in the methods hitherto
pursued lies in the absence of executive authority for originating comprehensive
plans covering the country or natural divisions thereof." In this opinion
I heartily concur. The present methods not only fail to give us inland
navigation, but they are injurious to the army as well. What is virtually
a permanent detail of the corps of engineers to civilian duty necessarily
impairs the efficiency of our military establishment. The military engineers
have undoubtedly done efficient work in actual construction, but they are
necessarily unsuited by their training and traditions to take the broad
view, and to gather and transmit to the Congress the commercial and industrial
information and forecasts, upon which waterway improvement must always
so largely rest. Furthermore, they have failed to grasp the great underlying
fact that every stream is a unit from its source to its mouth, and that
all its uses are interdependent. Prominent officers of the Engineer Corps
have recently even gone so far as to assert in print that waterways are
not dependent upon the conservation of the forests about their headwaters.
This position is opposed to all the recent work of the scientific bureaus
of the Government and to the general experience of mankind. A physician
who disbelieved in vaccination would not be the right man to handle an
epidemic of smallpox, nor should we leave a doctor skeptical about the
transmission of yellow fever by the Stegomyia mosquito in charge of sanitation
at Havana or Panama. So with the improvement of our rivers; it is no longer
wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of men who fail to grasp
the essential relations between navigation and general development and
to assimilate and use the central facts about our streams.

Until the work of river improvement is undertaken in a modern way it
can not have results that will meet the needs of this modern nation. These
needs should be met without further dilly-dallying or delay. The plan which
promises the best and quickest results is that of a permanent commission
authorized to coordinate the work of all the Government departments relating
to waterways, and to frame and supervise the execution of a comprehensive
plan. Under such a commission the actual work of construction might be
entrusted to the reclamation service; or to the military engineers acting
with a sufficient number of civilians to continue the work in time of war;
or it might be divided between the reclamation service and the corps of
engineers. Funds should be provided from current revenues if it is deemed
wise--otherwise from the sale of bonds. The essential thing is that the
work should go forward under the best possible plan, and with the least
possible delay. We should have a new type of work and a new organization
for planning and directing it. The time for playing with our waterways
is past. The country demands results.

NATIONAL PARKS.

I urge that all our National parks adjacent to National forests be placed
completely under the control of the forest service of the Agricultural
Department, instead of leaving them as they now are, under the Interior
Department and policed by the army. The Congress should provide for superintendents
with adequate corps of first-class civilian scouts, or rangers, and, further,
place the road construction under the superintendent instead of leaving
it with the War Department. Such a change in park management would result
in economy and avoid the difficulties of administration which now arise
from having the responsibility of care and protection divided between different
departments. The need for this course is peculiarly great in the Yellowstone
Park. This, like the Yosemite, is a great wonderland, and should be kept
as a national playground. In both, all wild things should be protected
and the scenery kept wholly unmarred.

I am happy to say that I have been able to set aside in various parts
of the country small, well-chosen tracts of ground to serve as sanctuaries
and nurseries for wild creatures.

DENATURED ALCOHOL.

I had occasion in my message of May 4, 1906, to urge the passage of
some law putting alcohol, used in the arts, industries, and manufactures,
upon the free list--that is, to provide for the withdrawal free of tax
of alcohol which is to be denatured for those purposes. The law of June
7, 1906, and its amendment of March 2, 1907, accomplished what was desired
in that respect, and the use of denatured alcohol, as intended, is making
a fair degree of progress and is entitled to further encouragement and
support from the Congress.

PURE FOOD.

The pure food legislation has already worked a benefit difficult to
overestimate.

INDIAN SERVICE.

It has been my purpose from the beginning of my administration to take
the Indian Service completely out of the atmosphere of political activity,
and there has been steady progress toward that end. The last remaining
stronghold of politics in that service was the agency system, which had
seen its best days and was gradually falling to pieces from natural or
purely evolutionary causes, but, like all such survivals, was decaying
slowly in its later stages. It seems clear that its extinction had better
be made final now, so that the ground can be cleared for larger constructive
work on behalf of the Indians, preparatory to their induction into the
full measure of responsible citizenship. On November 1 only eighteen agencies
were left on the roster; with two exceptions, where some legal questions
seemed to stand temporarily in the way, these have been changed to superintendencies,
and their heads brought into the classified civil service.

SECRET SERVICE.

Last year an amendment was incorporated in the measure providing for
the Secret Service, which provided that there should be no detail from
the Secret Service and no transfer therefrom. It is not too much to say
that this amendment has been of benefit only, and could be of benefit only,
to the criminal classes. If deliberately introduced for the purpose of
diminishing the effectiveness of war against crime it could not have been
better devised to this end. It forbade the practices that had been followed
to a greater or less extent by the executive heads of various departments
for twenty years. To these practices we owe the securing of the evidence
which enabled us to drive great lotteries out of business and secure a
quarter of a million of dollars in fines from their promoters. These practices
have enabled us to get some of the evidence indispensable in order in connection
with the theft of government land and government timber by great corporations
and by individuals. These practices have enabled us to get some of the
evidence indispensable in order to secure the conviction of the wealthiest
and most formidable criminals with whom the Government has to deal, both
those operating in violation of the anti-trust law and others. The amendment
in question was of benefit to no one excepting to these criminals, and
it seriously hampers the Government in the detection of crime and the securing
of justice. Moreover, it not only affects departments outside of the Treasury,
but it tends to hamper the Secretary of the Treasury himself in the effort
to utilize the employees of his department so as to best meet the requirements
of the public service. It forbids him from preventing frauds upon the customs
service, from investigating irregularities in branch mints and assay offices,
and has seriously crippled him. It prevents the promotion of employees
in the Secret Service, and this further discourages good effort. In its
present form the restriction operates only to the advantage of the criminal,
of the wrongdoer. The chief argument in favor of the provision was that
the Congressmen did not themselves wish to be investigated by Secret Service
men. Very little of such investigation has been done in the past; but it
is true that the work of the Secret Service agents was partly responsible
for the indictment and conviction of a Senator and a Congressman for land
frauds in Oregon. I do not believe that it is in the public interest to
protect criminally in any branch of the public service, and exactly as
we have again and again during the past seven years prosecuted and convicted
such criminals who were in the executive branch of the Government, so in
my belief we should be given ample means to prosecute them if found in
the legislative branch. But if this is not considered desirable a special
exception could be made in the law prohibiting the use of the Secret Service
force in investigating members of the Congress. It would be far better
to do this than to do what actually was done, and strive to prevent or
at least to hamper effective action against criminals by the executive
branch of the Government.

POSTAL SAVINGS BANKS.

I again renew my recommendation for postal savings hanks, for depositing
savings with the security of the Government behind them. The object is
to encourage thrift and economy in the wage-earner and person of moderate
means. In 14 States the deposits in savings banks as reported to the Comptroller
of the Currency amount to $3,590,245,402, or 98.4 per cent of the entire
deposits, while in the remaining 32 States there are only $70,308,543,
or 1.6 per cent, showing conclusively that there are many localities in
the United States where sufficient opportunity is not given to the people
to deposit their savings. The result is that money is kept in hiding and
unemployed. It is believed that in the aggregate vast sums of money would
be brought into circulation through the instrumentality of the postal savings
banks. While there are only 1,453 savings banks reporting to the Comptroller
there are more than 61,000 post-offices, 40,000 of which are money order
offices. Postal savings banks are now in operation in practically all of
the great civilized countries with the exception of the United States.

PARCEL POST.

In my last annual message I commended the Postmaster-General's recommendation
for an extension of the parcel post on the rural routes. The establishment
of a local parcel post on rural routes would be to the mutual benefit of
the farmer and the country storekeeper, and it is desirable that the routes,
serving more than 15,000,000 people, should be utilized to the fullest
practicable extent. An amendment was proposed in the Senate at the last
session, at the suggestion of the Postmaster-General, providing that, for
the purpose of ascertaining the practicability of establishing a special
local parcel post system on the rural routes throughout the United States,
the Postmaster-General be authorized and directed to experiment and report
to the Congress the result of such experiment by establishing a special
local parcel post system on rural delivery routes in not to exceed four
counties in the United States for packages of fourth-class matter originating
on a rural route or at the distributing post office for delivery by rural
carriers. It would seem only proper that such an experiment should be tried
in order to demonstrate the practicability of the proposition, especially
as the Postmaster-General estimates that the revenue derived from the operation
of such a system on all the rural routes would amount to many million dollars.

EDUCATION.

The share that the National Government should take in the broad work
of education has not received the attention and the care it rightly deserves.
The immediate responsibility for the support and improvement of our educational
systems and institutions rests and should always rest with the people of
the several States acting through their state and local governments, but
the Nation has an opportunity in educational work which must not be lost
and a duty which should no longer be neglected.

The National Bureau of Education was established more than forty years
ago. Its purpose is to collect and diffuse such information "as shall aid
the people of the United States in the establishment and maintenance of
efficient school systems and otherwise promote the cause of education throughout
the country." This purpose in no way conflicts with the educational work
of the States, but may be made of great advantage to the States by giving
them the fullest, most accurate, and hence the most helpful information
and suggestion regarding the best educational systems. The Nation, through
its broader field of activities, its wider opportunity for obtaining information
from all the States and from foreign countries, is able to do that which
not even the richest States can do, and with the distinct additional advantage
that the information thus obtained is used for the immediate benefit of
all our people.

With the limited means hitherto provided, the Bureau of Education has
rendered efficient service, but the Congress has neglected to adequately
supply the bureau with means to meet the educational growth of the country.
The appropriations for the general work of the bureau, outside education
in Alaska, for the year 1909 are but $87,500--an amount less than they
were ten years ago, and some of the important items in these appropriations
are less than they were thirty years ago. It is an inexcusable waste of
public money to appropriate an amount which is so inadequate as to make
it impossible properly to do the work authorized, and it is unfair to the
great educational interests of the country to deprive them of the value
of the results which can be obtained by proper appropriations.

I earnestly recommend that this unfortunate state of affairs as regards
the national educational office be remedied by adequate appropriations.
This recommendation is urged by the representatives of our common schools
and great state universities and the leading educators, who all unite in
requesting favorable consideration and action by the Congress upon this
subject.

CENSUS.

I strongly urge that the request of the Director of the Census in connection
with the decennial work so soon to be begun be complied with and that the
appointments to the census force be placed under the civil service law,
waiving the geographical requirements as requested by the Director of the
Census. The supervisors and enumerators should not be appointed under the
civil service law, for the reasons given by the Director. I commend to
the Congress the careful consideration of the admirable report of the Director
of the Census, and I trust that his recommendations will be adopted and
immediate action thereon taken.

PUBLIC HEALTH.

It is highly advisable that there should be intelligent action on the
part of the Nation on the question of preserving the health of the country.
Through the practical extermination in San Francisco of disease-bearing
rodents our country has thus far escaped the bubonic plague. This is but
one of the many achievements of American health officers; and it shows
what can be accomplished with a better organization than at present exists.
The dangers to public health from food adulteration and from many other
sources, such as the menace to the physical, mental and moral development
of children from child labor, should be met and overcome. There are numerous
diseases, which are now known to be preventable, which are, nevertheless,
not prevented. The recent International Congress on Tuberculosis has made
us painfully aware of the inadequacy of American public health legislation.
This Nation can not afford to lag behind in the world-wide battle now being
waged by all civilized people with the microscopic foes of mankind, nor
ought we longer to ignore the reproach that this Government takes more
pains to protect the lives of hogs and of cattle than of human beings.

REDISTRIBUTION OF BUREAUS.

The first legislative step to be taken is that for the concentration
of the proper bureaus into one of the existing departments. I therefore
urgently recommend the passage of a bill which shall authorize a redistribution
of the bureaus which shall best accomplish this end.

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

I recommend that legislation be enacted placing under the jurisdiction
of the Department of Commerce and Labor the Government Printing Office.
At present this office is under the combined control, supervision, and
administrative direction of the President and of the Joint Committee on
Printing of the two Houses of the Congress. The advantage of having the
4,069 employees in this office and the expenditure of the $5,761,377.57
appropriated therefor supervised by an executive department is obvious,
instead of the present combined supervision.

SOLDIERS' HOMES.

All Soldiers' Homes should be placed under the complete jurisdiction
and control of the War Department.

INDEPENDENT BUREAUS AND COMMISSIONS.

Economy and sound business policy require that all existing independent
bureaus and commissions should be placed under the jurisdiction of appropriate
executive departments. It is unwise from every standpoint, and results
only in mischief, to have any executive work done save by the purely executive
bodies, under the control of the President; and each such executive body
should be under the immediate supervision of a Cabinet Minister.

STATEHOOD.

I advocate the immediate admission of New Mexico and Arizona as States.
This should be done at the present session of the Congress. The people
of the two Territories have made it evident by their votes that they will
not come in as one State. The only alternative is to admit them as two,
and I trust that this will be done without delay.

INTERSTATE FISHERIES.

I call the attention of the Congress to the importance of the problem
of the fisheries in the interstate waters. On the Great Lakes we are now,
under the very wise treaty of April 11th of this year, endeavoring to come
to an international agreement for the preservation and satisfactory use
of the fisheries of these waters which can not otherwise be achieved. Lake
Erie, for example, has the richest fresh water fisheries in the world;
but it is now controlled by the statutes of two Nations, four States, and
one Province, and in this Province by different ordinances in different
counties. All these political divisions work at cross purposes, and in
no case can they achieve protection to the fisheries, on the one hand,
and justice to the localities and individuals on the other. The case is
similar in Puget Sound.

But the problem is quite as pressing in the interstate waters of the
United States. The salmon fisheries of the Columbia River are now but a
fraction of what they were twenty-five years ago, and what they would be
now if the United States Government had taken complete charge of them by
intervening between Oregon and Washington. During these twenty-five years
the fishermen of each State have naturally tried to take all they could
get, and the two legislatures have never been able to agree on joint action
of any kind adequate in degree for the protection of the fisheries. At
the moment the fishing on the Oregon side is practically closed, while
there is no limit on the Washington side of any kind, and no one can tell
what the courts will decide as to the very statutes under which this action
and non-action result. Meanwhile very few salmon reach the spawning grounds,
and probably four years hence the fisheries will amount to nothing; and
this comes from a struggle between the associated, or gill-net, fishermen
on the one hand, and the owners of the fishing wheels up the river. The
fisheries of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Potomac are also in a bad
way. For this there is no remedy except for the United States to control
and legislate for the interstate fisheries as part of the business of interstate
commerce. In this case the machinery for scientific investigation and for
control already exists in the United States Bureau of Fisheries. In this
as in similar problems the obvious and simple rule should be followed of
having those matters which no particular State can manage taken in hand
by the United States; problems which in the seesaw of conflicting State
legislatures are absolutely unsolvable are easy enough for Congress to
control.

FISHERIES AND FUR SEALS.

The federal statute regulating interstate traffic in game should be
extended to include fish. New federal fish hatcheries should be established.
The administration of the Alaskan fur-seal service should be vested in
the Bureau of Fisheries.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

This Nation's foreign policy is based on the theory that right must
be done between nations precisely as between individuals, and in our actions
for the last ten years we have in this matter proven our faith by our deeds.
We have behaved, and are behaving, towards other nations as in private
life an honorable man would behave towards his fellows.

LATIN-AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

The commercial and material progress of the twenty Latin-American Republics
is worthy of the careful attention of the Congress. No other section of
the world has shown a greater proportionate development of its foreign
trade during the last ten years and none other has more special claims
on the interest of the United States. It offers to-day probably larger
opportunities for the legitimate expansion of our commerce than any other
group of countries. These countries will want our products in greatly increased
quantities, and we shall correspondingly need theirs. The International
Bureau of the American Republics is doing a useful work in making these
nations and their resources better known to us, and in acquainting them
not only with us as a people and with our purposes towards them, but with
what we have to exchange for their goods. It is an international institution
supported by all the governments of the two Americas.

PANAMA CANAL.

The work on the Panama Canal is being done with a speed, efficiency
and entire devotion to duty which make it a model for all work of the kind.
No task of such magnitude has ever before been undertaken by any nation;
and no task of the kind has ever been better performed. The men on the
isthmus, from Colonel Goethals and his fellow commissioners through the
entire list of employees who are faithfully doing their duty, have won
their right to the ungrudging respect and gratitude of the American people.

OCEAN MAIL LINERS.

I again recommend the extension of the ocean mail act of 1891 so that
satisfactory American ocean mail lines to South America, Asia, the Philippines,
and Australiasia may be established. The creation of such steamship lines
should be the natural corollary of the voyage of the battle fleet. It should
precede the opening of the Panamal Canal. Even under favorable conditions
several years must elapse before such lines can be put into operation.
Accordingly I urge that the Congress act promptly where foresight already
shows that action sooner or later will be inevitable.

HAWAII.

I call particular attention to the Territory of Hawaii. The importance
of those islands is apparent, and the need of improving their condition
and developing their resources is urgent. In recent years industrial conditions
upon the islands have radically changed, The importation of coolie labor
has practically ceased, and there is now developing such a diversity in
agricultural products as to make possible a change in the land conditions
of the Territory, so that an opportunity may be given to the small land
owner similar to that on the mainland. To aid these changes, the National
Government must provide the necessary harbor improvements on each island,
so that the agricultural products can be carried to the markets of the
world. The coastwise shipping laws should be amended to meet the special
needs of the islands, and the alien contract labor law should be so modified
in its application to Hawaii as to enable American and European labor to
be brought thither.

We have begun to improve Pearl Harbor for a naval base and to provide
the necessary military fortifications for the protection of the islands,
but I can not too strongly emphasize the need of appropriations for these
purposes of such an amount as will within the shortest possible time make
those islands practically impregnable. It is useless to develop the industrial
conditions of the islands and establish there bases of supply for our naval
and merchant fleets unless we insure, as far as human ingenuity can, their
safety from foreign seizure.

One thing to be remembered with all our fortifications is that it is
almost useless to make them impregnable from the sea if they are left open
to land attack. This is true even of our own coast, but it is doubly true
of our insular possessions. In Hawaii, for instance, it is worse than useless
to establish a naval station unless we establish it behind fortifications
so strong that no landing force can take them save by regular and long-continued
siege operations.

THE PHILIPPINES.

Real progress toward self-government is being made in the Philippine
Islands. The gathering of a Philippine legislative body and Philippine
assembly marks a process absolutely new in Asia, not only as regards Asiatic
colonies of European powers but as regards Asiatic possessions of other
Asiatic powers; and, indeed, always excepting the striking and wonderful
example afforded by the great Empire of Japan, it opens an entirely new
departure when compared with anything which has happened among Asiatic
powers which are their own masters. Hitherto this Philippine legislature
has acted with moderation and self-restraint, and has seemed in practical
fashion to realize the eternal truth that there must always be government,
and that the only way in which any body of individuals can escape the necessity
of being governed by outsiders is to show that they are able to restrain
themselves, to keep down wrongdoing and disorder. The Filipino people,
through their officials, are therefore making real steps in the direction
of self-government. I hope and believe that these steps mark the beginning
of a course which will continue till the Filipinos become fit to decide
for themselves whether they desire to be an independent nation. But it
is well for them (and well also for those Americans who during the past
decade have done so much damage to the Filipinos by agitation for an immediate
independence for which they were totally unfit) to remember that self-government
depends, and must depend, upon the Filipinos themselves. All we can do
is to give them the opportunity to develop the capacity for self-government.
If we had followed the advice of the foolish doctrinaires who wished us
at any time during the last ten years to turn the Filipino people adrift,
we should have shirked the plainest possible duty and have inflicted a
lasting wrong upon the Filipino people. We have acted in exactly the opposite
spirit. We have given the Filipinos constitutional government--a government
based upon justice--and we have shown that we have governed them for their
good and not for our aggrandizement. At the present time, as during the
past ten years, the inexorable logic of facts shows that this government
must be supplied by us and not by them. We must be wise and generous; we
must help the Filipinos to master the difficult art of self-control, which
is simply another name for self-government. But we can not give them self-government
save in the sense of governing them so that gradually they may, if they
are able, learn to govern themselves. Under the present system of just
laws and sympathetic administration, we have every reason to believe that
they are gradually acquiring the character which lies at the basis of self-government,
and for which, if it be lacking, no system of laws, no paper constitution,
will in any wise serve as a substitute. Our people in the Philippines have
achieved what may legitimately be called a marvelous success in giving
to them a government which marks on the part of those in authority both
the necessary understanding of the people and the necessary purpose to
serve them disinterestedly and in good faith. I trust that within a generation
the time will arrive when the Philippines can decide for themselves whether
it is well for them to become independent, or to continue under the protection
of a strong and disinterested power, able to guarantee to the islands order
at home and protection from foreign invasion. But no one can prophesy the
exact date when it will be wise to consider independence as a fixed and
definite policy. It would be worse than folly to try to set down such a
date in advance, for it must depend upon the way in which the Philippine
people themselves develop the power of self-mastery.

PORTO RICO.

I again recommend that American citizenship be conferred upon the people
of Porto Rico.

CUBA.

In Cuba our occupancy will cease in about two months' time, the Cubans
have in orderly manner elected their own governmental authorities, and
the island will be turned over to them. Our occupation on this occasion
has lasted a little over two years, and Cuba has thriven and prospered
under it. Our earnest hope and one desire is that the people of the island
shall now govern themselves with justice, so that peace and order may be
secure. We will gladly help them to this end; but I would solemnly warn
them to remember the great truth that the only way a people can permanently
avoid being governed from without is to show that they both can and will
govern themselves from within.

JAPANESE EXPOSITION.

The Japanese Government has postponed until 1917 the date of the great
international exposition, the action being taken so as to insure ample
time in which to prepare to make the exposition all that it should be made.
The American commissioners have visited Japan and the postponement will
merely give ampler opportunity for America to be represented at the exposition.
Not since the first international exposition has there been one of greater
importance than this will be, marking as it does the fiftieth anniversary
of the ascension to the throne of the Emperor of Japan. The extraordinary
leap to a foremost place among the nations of the world made by Japan during
this half century is something unparalleled in all previous history. This
exposition will fitly commemorate and signalize the giant progress that
has been achieved. It is the first exposition of its kind that has ever
been held in Asia. The United States, because of the ancient friendship
between the two peoples, because each of us fronts on the Pacific, and
because of the growing commercial relations between this country and Asia,
takes a peculiar interest in seeing the exposition made a success in every
way.

I take this opportunity publicly to state my appreciation of the way
in which in Japan, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in all the States
of South America, the battle fleet has been received on its practice voyage
around the world. The American Government can not too strongly express
its appreciation of the abounding and generous hospitality shown our ships
in every port they visited.

THE ARMY.

As regards the Army I call attention to the fact that while our junior
officers and enlisted men stand very high, the present system of promotion
by seniority results in bringing into the higher grades many men of mediocre
capacity who have but a short time to serve. No man should regard it as
his vested right to rise to the highest rank in the Army any more than
in any other profession. It is a curious and by no means creditable fact
that there should be so often a failure on the part of the public and its
representatives to understand the great need, from the standpoint of the
service and the Nation, of refusing to promote respectable, elderly incompetents.
The higher places should be given to the most deserving men without regard
to seniority; at least seniority should be treated as only one consideration.
In the stress of modern industrial competition no business firm could succeed
if those responsible for its management were chosen simply on the ground
that they were the oldest people in its employment; yet this is the course
advocated as regards the Army, and required by law for all grades except
those of general officer. As a matter of fact, all of the best officers
in the highest ranks of the Army are those who have attained their present
position wholly or in part by a process of selection.

The scope of retiring boards should be extended so that they could consider
general unfitness to command for any cause, in order to secure a far more
rigid enforcement than at present in the elimination of officers for mental,
physical or temperamental disabilities. But this plan is recommended only
if the Congress does not see fit to provide what in my judgment is far
better; that is, for selection in promotion, and for elimination for age.
Officers who fail to attain a certain rank by a certain age should be retired--for
instance, if a man should not attain field rank by the time he is 45 he
should of course be placed on the retired list. General officers should
be selected as at present, and one-third of the other promotions should
be made by selection, the selection to be made by the President or the
Secretary of War from a list of at least two candidates proposed for each
vacancy by a board of officers from the arm of the service from which the
promotion is to be made. A bill is now before the Congress having for its
object to secure the promotion of officers to various grades at reasonable
ages through a process of selection, by boards of officers, of the least
efficient for retirement with a percentage of their pay depending upon
length of service. The bill, although not accomplishing all that should
be done, is a long step in the right direction; and I earnestly recommend
its passage, or that of a more completely effective measure.

The cavalry arm should be reorganized upon modern lines. This is an
arm in which it is peculiarly necessary that the field officers should
not be old. The cavalry is much more difficult to form than infantry, and
it should be kept up to the maximum both in efficiency and in strength,
for it can not be made in a hurry. At present both infantry and artillery
are too few in number for our needs. Especial attention should be paid
to development of the machine gun. A general service corps should be established.
As things are now the average soldier has far too much labor of a nonmilitary
character to perform.

NATIONAL GUARD.

Now that the organized militia, the National Guard, has been incorporated
with the Army as a part of the national forces, it behooves the Government
to do every reasonable thing in its power to perfect its efficiency. It
should be assisted in its instruction and otherwise aided more liberally
than heretofore. The continuous services of many well-trained regular officers
will be essential in this connection. Such officers must be specially trained
at service schools best to qualify them as instructors of the National
Guard. But the detailing of officers for training at the service schools
and for duty with the National Guard entails detaching them from their
regiments which are already greatly depleted by detachment of officers
for assignment to duties prescribed by acts of the Congress.

A bill is now pending before the Congress creating a number of extra
officers in the Army, which if passed, as it ought to be, will enable more
officers to be trained as instructors of the National Guard and assigned
to that duty. In case of war it will be of the utmost importance to have
a large number of trained officers to use for turning raw levies into good
troops.

There should be legislation to provide a complete plan for organizing
the great body of volunteers behind the Regular Army and National Guard
when war has come. Congressional assistance should be given those who are
endeavoring to promote rifle practice so that our men, in the services
or out of them, may know how to use the rifle. While teams representing
the United States won the rifle and revolver championships of the world
against all comers in England this year, it is unfortunately true that
the great body of our citizens shoot less and less as time goes on. To
meet this we should encourage rifle practice among schoolboys, and indeed
among all classes, as well as in the military services, by every means
in our power. Thus, and not otherwise, may we be able to assist in preserving
the peace of the world. Fit to hold our own against the strong nations
of the earth, our voice for peace will carry to the ends of the earth.
Unprepared, and therefore unfit, we must sit dumb and helpless to defend
ourselves, protect others, or preserve peace. The first step--in the direction
of preparation to avert war if possible, and to be fit for war if it should
come--is to teach our men to shoot.

THE NAVY.

I approve the recommendations of the General Board for the increase
of the Navy, calling especial attention to the need of additional destroyers
and colliers, and above all, of the four battleships. It is desirable to
complete as soon as possible a squadron of eight battleships of the best
existing type. The North Dakota, Delaware, Florida, and Utah will form
the first division of this squadron. The four vessels proposed will form
the second division. It will be an improvement on the first, the ships
being of the heavy, single caliber, all big gun type. All the vessels should
have the same tactical qualities--that is, speed and turning circle--and
as near as possible these tactical qualities should be the same as in the
four vessels before named now being built.

I most earnestly recommend that the General Board be by law turned into
a General Staff. There is literally no excuse whatever for continuing the
present bureau organization of the Navy. The Navy should be treated as
a purely military organization, and everything should be subordinated to
the one object of securing military efficiency. Such military efficiency
can only be guaranteed in time of war if there is the most thorough previous
preparation in time of peace--a preparation, I may add, which will in all
probability prevent any need of war. The Secretary must be supreme, and
he should have as his official advisers a body of line officers who should
themselves have the power to pass upon and coordinate all the work and
all the proposals of the several bureaus. A system of promotion by merit,
either by selection or by exclusion, or by both processes, should be introduced.
It is out of the question, if the present principle of promotion by mere
seniority is kept, to expect to get the best results from the higher officers.
Our men come too old, and stay for too short a time, in the high command
positions.

Two hospital ships should be provided. The actual experience of the
hospital ship with the fleet in the Pacific has shown the invaluable work
which such a ship does, and has also proved that it is well to have it
kept under the command of a medical officer. As was to be expected, all
of the anticipations of trouble from such a command have proved completely
baseless. It is as absurd to put a hospital ship under a line officer as
it would be to put a hospital on shore under such a command. This ought
to have been realized before, and there is no excuse for failure to realize
it now.

Nothing better for the Navy from every standpoint has ever occurred
than the cruise of the battle fleet around the world. The improvement of
the ships in every way has been extraordinary, and they have gained far
more experience in battle tactics than they would have gained if they had
stayed in the Atlantic waters. The American people have cause for profound
gratification, both in view of the excellent condition of the fleet as
shown by this cruise, and in view of the improvement the cruise has worked
in this already high condition. I do not believe that there is any other
service in the world in which the average of character and efficiency in
the enlisted men is as high as is now the case in our own. I believe that
the same statement can be made as to our officers, taken as a whole; but
there must be a reservation made in regard to those in the highest ranks--as
to which I have already spoken--and in regard to those who have just entered
the service; because we do not now get full benefit from our excellent
naval school at Annapolis. It is absurd not to graduate the midshipmen
as ensigns; to keep them for two years in such an anomalous position as
at present the law requires is detrimental to them and to the service.
In the academy itself, every first classman should be required in turn
to serve as petty officer and officer; his ability to discharge his duties
as such should be a prerequisite to his going into the line, and his success
in commanding should largely determine his standing at graduation. The
Board of Visitors should be appointed in January, and each member should
be required to give at least six days' service, only from one to three
days' to be performed during June week, which is the least desirable time
for the board to be at Annapolis so far as benefiting the Navy by their
observations is concerned.